Elle LeClere:
Digitization is one of the most popular methods for increasing access to archival repositories, but these new practices challenge many of archivists’ professional and personal values around issues such as protecting individual privacy rights. LeClere considers interview data collected from archivists who all worked on digital collections similar in size and scope, though each institutional approach to managing privacy was different. The sheer volume of many collections made it impossible for archivists to consider privacy at the item-level, and led to many archivists delegating that responsibility to other actors. Despite these work-arounds, there is still a deep concern among many archivists that it will become even more difficult to maintain individual privacy given new technologies.